601
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Maxwell Embrya
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on: May 02, 2009, 12:00:32 am
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About 8 years ago, I made what I consider to be the biggest mistake along my 'hifi journey'. I sold my beloved Rotel RHCD-10 CD player to buy a Sony SCD-1. I didn't like the Sony so bought a Marantz SA-1. I didn't like that either, and decided that SACD was wrong - it just can't recreate real transients.
Well, last week, I took delivery of a mint Rotel RHCD-10 and a matching RHA-10/RHB-10 pre/power amp to use in my office. This CD player may be 15 years old, but my God, what a CD player! In may ways, I prefer it to my Esoteric P70/D70.
WOW this is a big statement. I know how good that esoteric combo sounds I had in the past a rotel 971, it was easily beated with a teac 10se. The 991 was probably on par, not not with a quality external dac. I have googled the rhcd-10 and seems the top of the line. Good sturdy unit.
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602
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Measuring XXHighEnd ...
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on: May 01, 2009, 11:54:51 pm
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(1) 1st trace 4-0-0-0-0 Unattended compared to Foobar WASAPI; (2) 2nd trace -4-0-0-0-0 Unattanded compared to Foobar WASAPI; (3) 3rd trace 4-0-0-0-0 Unattended compared to -4-0-0-0-0 Unattended.
??? I dont understand. You must have done a typo with some attended/unattended in the list above.
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603
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Measuring XXHighEnd ...
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on: May 01, 2009, 11:52:22 pm
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My comment about Q=-4 being the gold standard was a bit 'tongue-in-cheek' - it seems to provide the biggest difference with Foobar WASAPI... ergo must be the best setting. But of course, this is flawed logic Wait, wait, wait. I remarked that Q1=4 is indeed the gold standard because that's the setting that i like the most, not the one most different from foobar. That would be just silly. I experimented with several settings. Anything under 0 was plain cr*p (=digital) Tried 5, 6, 8, 10, 14 and the max. Above 14 things went too fussy. Between 4 and 6,8,10 I ended to prefer 4. Between 4 and 14, it is more a matter of taste. with some recording 14 (more smoothing) can be more pleasant, but I believe to be less true to the original. Now, my comparisons with Foobar, which started about one year ago are interesting too. I told Peter that I felt xxhe to be a BIG improvement over it only from version v (or w now i dont remember). So they come after, choosing the Q1 and the Q1 has not been changed after that. I used 4 since the first time Peter said that it was his favourite. I tested again with x1 and my preference was still Q1=4. In that occasion i briefly tested Q2 and Q3, but didnt like them particularly. I have to say that I didnt do much tests with those, and after the comments on those, I will do more evaluations.
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604
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Measuring XXHighEnd ...
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on: April 30, 2009, 02:34:03 pm
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Foobar WASAPI shows a mild pattern compared with XXHighEnd WASAPI (Engine#3) just the same, when compared with XX-Q-4-0-0-0-0 (which seems safe). So far, I don't know whether Foobar creates that pattern, or XX does it. We only know XX sounds better, but we actually don't know whether that's because an unauthorised frequency riding on things. With the knowledge of the last picture, and without examining it again, I dare say that this too comes from the time cursor in Foobar. So, once specifics are known and can be recognized, it becomes more and more easy to qualify what is happening in other situations. This will be a matter of experience. Hi Peter, It would be very nice to have a foobar-wasapi comparison vs xxhe q1=4 attended (which seem to be the gold standard)
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605
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Writing .wav files to HDD using a Blu-Ray writer - they sound better to me
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on: April 30, 2009, 02:26:51 pm
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Hi Telstar, Thanks for that insight. However, can I suggest that you try something? Take a track that you're very familiar with, rip it to HDD with EAC as a .wav file, make a lossless .flac file conversion of this, and then remake a .wav file (using a different name) from the .flac file. Listen to the original .wav in comparison to the .wav file remade from the .flac file. The md5 checksums of the 2 .wav files will still be identical but do they still sound identical? A few folk, including myself, have perceived differences in SQ. If this is so, it seems to challenge whether .flac is indeed lossless. And it appears that PeterSt might now have a means of examining this empirically based on what is output from, rather than input to, the receiver and DAC chips. Very cleaver guy. cheers.. Jeffc I will try. But i use EAC for wav-flac conversion, which is exactly the same flac version, so I believe that the two files will sound identical. I try to find time to check this over the weekend.
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606
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Writing .wav files to HDD using a Blu-Ray writer - they sound better to me
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on: April 29, 2009, 12:05:12 pm
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FLAC vs WAV Post #13 After converting some FLAC to WAV and WAV to FLAC, I've made some listening with 24/192, 24/96 and 16/44, playing successively the different files. Of course, this test setup does not allows me to draw solid conclusions. I was expecting no difference, and I was wrong. The music seems to be slightly improved in many ways: less sparkle (yes Sandy), a more analog presentation, better dynamics, ambiance feeling more there, better timbre accuracy, a more involving music. I can't say the difference was bigger with HD tracks. Does anyone has same results, and even better, an explaination ? Before ordering bigger hard disk drives, I'll repeat the tests after making some upgrades. All the best, Alain
This is not related to the ripping method. It depends on cpu usage and the realtime decompression that flac requires. On my E8400 with xxhe I do not hear differences between flac and wav (both 16.44k1).
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611
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Anyone NOT having this problem ?
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on: April 15, 2009, 04:03:30 pm
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I'm addressing those who play Attended from off 0.9x-6a ...
Is there anyone else noticing that playback stops half through the last track in the Playlist ?
Or the other way around
Is there anyone out there who clearly never sees this problem ?
Using 6c. No stops here, except for very rare "no track" error popup.
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615
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Music Storage and convenient playback / Re: soundcard question
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on: April 04, 2009, 01:29:50 pm
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Stupid, stupid, you are right.
But what about the orange slot in the middle??????
Yes. Because you can put a pci-e x1 card in ANY pci-e slot, being them x1, x4, x8 or x16 (the latter two look the same). Therefore, you have plenty of choice for your x-fi (but it's not the best choice sonically speaking in its pricerange). Or, you can put the videocard in the orange one (will run x8 or x4, if you dont play games, you wont notice anything) and have more air around the cpu and the soundcard.
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